


Just Like Flying

by Musyc



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Aurora Sinistra - character, Community: hp_beholder, F/F, Hogwarts, Humor, Mutual Masturbation, Post-War, Romance, Xiomara Hooch - character, femmeslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-26
Updated: 2009-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:30:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musyc/pseuds/Musyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like riding a bicycle or flying a broomstick, there are some things one never forgets how to do. It just takes a little reminder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like Flying

Every year before the students arrived, she did a flyover of the school to check the roofs and crenelations. Ever since that Longbottom boy and his little incident, she'd paid extra attention to the sharp points and the landing zones beneath them. She took notes and kept track of all the places that needed repair, did a scan of the grounds for Hagrid. Really, there wasn't much she did around the castle except for refereeing the matches and teaching nervous first years how not to fall from two feet off the ground, but what she did, she did conscientiously. When something was odd, she investigated, for the good of the school.

That year, as Hooch flew up over the rooftops and circled the astronomy tower, she heard a muffled and groaning sound, a quiet moan that came from the top observation level. Thinking Peeves or one of the ghosts - that Myrtle girl, perhaps - had got into something they shouldn't, she braked her broom and flew over in silence, wand at the ready. One never knew what one would come across at Hogwarts, and it never failed to be prepared. Especially in this day and age.

Speaking of age.

Her hips creaked when she squeezed her thighs against the broom, holding it still, and she held her breath, waiting for the familiar ache to ease. Decades upon decades of broomsticks and altitudes, and every year she felt old. Not just older, but old. The dozens of wide-eyed and round-cheeked boys and girls who stumbled breathless to the Sorting Hat, the dozens of tall and half-grown men and women in their last year with knowing glances and hands fumbling under the tables. They all made her feel her years pressing down on her. In a way, she thought, as she slowly dismounted the broom and crept towards the tower door, that's why she flew. When she was in the air, gravity had no claim on her, age couldn't slump her shoulders.

She heard that low moan again, but it was thicker, more firm while at the same time more shaky, and she tightened her grip on her wand. Not one of the ghosts, then. Their voices were as thin and wispy as their forms. Her heart stuttered suddenly. Sinistra. The astronomy professor kept to herself, only joined the staff for meetings and meals, for Quidditch matches from time to time. The rest of the time, she stayed in her tower. What if she'd fallen, what if she was hurt? She could be in pain, and Hooch knew only too well the risks of taking an injury when no one was around to help. Her left ankle still twinged when the weather shifted at night, after that bad landing near Aberdeen back in the sixties.

Carefully pushing open the tower door, she poked her wand in, then her sharp and beak-like nose. Hawk Hooch, they'd called her, when she was a student at this very school, and when matched with her yellow eyes, she'd been proud to take that name. As she slowly stepped into the room and let her eyes adjust to the dimmer light, she knew how much her brilliant brown plumage had molted to grey and her eyes had yellowed in more than just the irises. Not so much of the proud hawk, anymore. "Aurora?" she called softly, making her way between desks and telescopes. "Aurora, are you all right?"

That soft and shaking moan came again from behind an inner door, and Hooch made her way to it. This room was even dimmer, and she paused, blinking rapidly to make her vision adjust faster. At the far end of the room, a woman was bent over a desk, charts piled high around her and spilled onto the floor. Before Hooch could open her mouth to speak, another moan came, much louder, and the woman at the desk writhed with a movement of her arm, her hips shifting and setting the hem of her robes to swaying around her knees. Putting her wand away, Hooch stepped forward. "Aurora?"

With a shriek and a flail of her arm that knocked a dozen charts slithering to the floor, Sinistra shot upright and spun around, the front hem of her robes dropping from where she'd had them hiked up to her waist, the fastenings around her bodice undone and her breasts exposed. Hooch felt her eyes widen and she turned, apologizing quickly and repeatedly. Even as Sinistra called after her, she dashed out and back through the classroom, out to the deck and her waiting broom. Her knees popped as she mounted, a stitch cut into her side just below her ribs, and when she landed and hurried back to her rooms, she blamed the pinkness of her cheeks on the wind.

* * *

The next few days were filled with organizing schedules for the year's matches, upkeep of the school brooms and purchase of new ones, and clearing the locker rooms of the spying spells that the students always managed to place at the end of the year. Hooch, generally exhausted by it all, took her meals in her room, and it wasn't until the official first day supper and the introduction of the staff to the freshly sorted students that she sat at the long table again. That she saw Sinistra again.

She did her best to keep her eyes averted, to concentrate on her plate and her meal, but despite herself, occasionally, her eyes would flicker to the other witch who sat demure and quiet in conversation with Professor Vector. No sign of the woman who'd been bent over her own desk, her arm moving under her robes. No hint of the rounded abdomen and the swaying breasts she'd seen when Sinistra had turned in such surprise. Sinistra seemed to feel the weight of her eyes and, bending over her plate, slanted a glance at her. Hooch sat back quickly, concentrating on her steaming-hot tea, blaming her sweat-dotted brow and spiking temperature on an over-enthusiastic gulp. For the rest of supper, she kept her attention the other direction, and spoke only to Flitwick on his tall stool and cushions.

When the meal was over, she made her way out of the hall, surrounded by a herd of chattering students all anxious to know about the upcoming Quidditch season. "Practice sessions are scheduled by the teams and you will need to speak to your Head of House. _No_, I will not be giving extra time on the pitch to Slytherin, unless you are insinuating that the team is so bad this year that you will _need_ the excess practice." When that group moved away in an outraged green swirl, she looked up to see Sinistra ahead of her in the corridor. Her breath caught for a moment, but she straightened her shoulders and marched forward. "This isn't the way to your tower, Aurora," she said as she drew even with the younger witch.

"No." Sinistra fell into step beside her, heeled boots - there had been boots with tall heels under those robes, Hooch remembered, pushing her calves up, tense and elongated - clicking as she walked. "But this is the best way to keep you from avoiding me any longer. Or did you want to keep pretending that you weren't up on my tower a week ago?"

Hooch kept her eyes on the flagstones of the corridor, the voices of the students fading as they left the public areas. "I didn't mean to interrupt," she said quietly. "I heard a sound, and thought I'd check--"

"No need to apologize, Xiomara." Sinistra's voice seemed amused and Hooch glanced up to see a small grin flirting at the corner of her mouth. "Not exactly something you'd expect to run across. My apologies, actually. I normally lock that door, but I was in a hurry. Sometimes a woman just can't wait for a little attention, and I wanted to take care of things before I forgot that delightful daydream about that Crumb boy from the Weird Sisters."

Hooch stumbled at the forthright and candid explanation, her bad ankle twisting under her. She slapped the wall with one hand, hissing softly both at the sudden pain and at Sinistra's hand catching her under the arm, knuckles brushing her breast. "I'm all right," she muttered, "Just my ankle. Goes out on me from time to time."

All her protests were waved off, any attempt to get back to her room without assistance ignored, and by the time both women had made it to her door, Hooch wasn't certain if she was breathing harder from the extra effort to walk with her ankle or from the scent of apples that Sinistra's hair gave off as it swung. Sinistra led her into her room and solicitously helped her to a chair, crouched down in front of her to gently prod at her ankle, her sensible flat boots set aside. "Aurora, honestly. I'm fine. You don't need to do that."

Sinistra glanced up at her with one eyebrow raised and her lips pressed together tightly, and Hooch leaned back in the chair, giving up on any further protests. Sinistra's hands were warm on her skin, fingers soft as they kneaded into tightened muscles. Several minutes passed, Hooch relaxing under Sinistra's ministrations, strong fingers rubbing at her ankle and foot. Firm strokes over her arch and instep, gentle attention paid to the calluses on her heel. With her eyes closed and her hands lax on the arms of the chair, Hooch didn't notice the slow progression of Sinistra's hands until she felt a tickle at the back of her knee.

Leg jumping, heart jumping, she looked down to see Sinistra kneeling between her feet, one hand wrapped around her calf and one poised at the beginning of her thigh. Sinistra's fingers were under her robes, only inches from the bottom of her woolen chemise, and Sinistra licked her lips as she looked up. "Something the matter, Xiomara?"

"What in Circe's name are you doing?" Hooch stuttered on her words, stumbled over the question. She had to admit to herself that she didn't really know which answer she wanted Sinistra to give. Unconscious actions or a deliberate movement further and further up her leg, which did she want it to be most?

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Xiomara. I didn't ... I thought perhaps...." Sinistra stood up, straightening her robes with short, rapid tugs, smoothing her hair back behind her ears with both hands. "I just thought ... well. I see how you watch me sometimes, and I thought." She flashed a quick smile that was only a shift of her lips but never touched her eyes, then backed to the door, reaching behind her to fumble for the handle. "Sorry."

She was gone, fast as a Snitch, and Hooch settled back in her chair, her hands on her thighs and her brows furrowed over eyes that were locked onto the spot between her feet where Sinistra had knelt.

* * *

She avoided even glancing at the tower for the next month, avoided looking in Sinistra's direction at meals and staff meetings. She couldn't block out the other woman's cheerful laugh when Flitwick imitated Snape, though, or the weight of someone watching her. Couldn't block out the rare and random glimpses she caught of Sinistra's rueful expression, the way she sometimes noticed Sinistra start to step towards her with a hand outstretched before dropping back and turning away to leave the Great Hall and return to her tower.

It wasn't until she had to chase a shrieking first year who had confused up with down and found himself clinging with all four limbs to a broom that would have been laughing if it could, wasn't until she caught him hovering over the castle and gently guided him to land on the roof and take a breather, that she saw Sinistra again, looked her full in the face. Sinistra was at the window of her tower, one hand laid on the frame, one covering her mouth. Her eyes were sparkling with the giggles she was failing to hide, and Hooch flashed a grin at her over the child's head. The grin was returned before Sinistra slipped back into her tower, and Hooch led the student back to the ground, struggling with a broom that seemed to want to bounce in the air.

That evening, she made her slow, aching way to the tower, pausing every couple of flights to regain her breath, and knocked gently on the door, each clack of her knuckles seeming to echo the pound of her heart. Several seconds passed and she gathered her robes around her to turn and go back down the long stair with her knees protesting every step, but the door opened a few inches and one Sinistra-eye looked out at her. "Aurora," Hooch said, assuming her voice trembled from the effort it had taken to climb up. "I was hoping to talk to you?"

"I was hoping you'd want to, eventually." Sinistra pulled the door open and stepped back, leaving Hooch to shut it and follow, winding past desks and telescopes to a small, hidden door that led into Sinistra's personal chambers. She tapped her wand on a teapot and steam whistled through the spout. "I'd offer you a little something stronger, but I don't want you thinking I'm attempting to seduce you." Sinistra's voice held just the tiniest trace of annoyance in it, and Hooch winced as she took a chair.

"That's ... rather what I wanted to talk about." She nodded her thanks as Sinistra set a full teacup on the table by her elbow, then folded her hands in her lap and waited for the other witch to take a seat. "You said, last time we talked, in my room. Um. You said that you'd seen me watching you, and you thought something." Her fingers twisted together, and she cleared her throat. "You didn't say _what_ you'd thought."

Sinistra took a long drink of her tea, both hands around the thin china cup, then lowered it just enough to speak. "Thought you might be interested, Xiomara. I'm a pretty good judge of people, I know what I see. Comes from staring at the sky all the time, I suppose, makes the eyes a little sharper. I thought I'd seen some interest, thought you might lean towards the ... well, the Sapphic persuasion, shall we say? Of course, I can be wrong, and I do apologize if I was."

"You weren't." Hooch forced the words out through a swallow, and she shook her head, clamping her fingers together more tightly despite the ache in her joints. "I mean, not about my 'persuasion'. You got that right. But I didn't think _you_ were. You were talking about the Crumb fellow, and I've seen you flirting with that one bloke from the Ministry who comes to watch his daughter play for Hufflepuff."

"Oh, that." Sinistra laughed quietly, setting her tea aside. "I'm far less concerned with the outside than the inside, Xiomara. What bits and bobs are attached to the person isn't near as important as the _person_ him-, or her-, self." She leaned forward, looking Hooch over. "So if I wasn't wrong about your leanings, I have to ask. Was I wrong about your interest?"

Hooch stared at her fingers, then slowly shut her eyes. What could she say to that? What was she _willing_ to say? That Sinistra had caught her attention years before? That at the Yule Ball, during the Tournament, she'd been so focused on the tight line of beading across Sinistra's bodice and the curves of Sinistra's breasts and hips that she'd dropped a slice of cheesecake on a boy from Durmstrang? That she once actually _missed calling a foul_ during a Slytherin-Gryffindor match because she could have sworn a telescope was pointed at her, with a smiling, dark-haired figure behind it? That Sinistra's mouth was full and soft and Sinistra was kissing her?

Kissing her.

Sinistra was kissing her, had left the chair and was bent over hers, both hands on the arms of her chair, and it _was_ a soft mouth, Sinistra's lips gentle against her own cracked and wind-chapped lips, and the tiny, damp point of Sinistra's tongue brushed the curve of her mouth. Hooch took a short, quick breath, almost a gasp, and her eyes flew open. Sinistra made a quiet, interrogative hum, without moving away, her lashes lifting just enough to meet Hooch's wide gaze, and several long, heart-pounding seconds passed before Hooch returned the hum, affirmative.

Right. _Right_, then. It may have been quite a while, but _this_ was a broom she knew how to fly. She raised her hands and cupped Sinistra's cheeks in her palms, pads of her fingers toying with Sinistra's lobes. The small, fine hair that dangled behind Sinistra's ears tickled at the tips of her fingers, and she shifted her hands, sliding back, wrapping around, and releasing the smell of apples. "Nice shampoo," she murmured, smiling, and she felt Sinistra's mouth move against hers, lips curling up on a muttered thanks. "Aurora, I...."

"Professor Sinistra!" Both women froze at the shout and the muffled pounding on the main door of the tower room, the sound of a student in desperate, frantic straits. "Professor, please! I need to ask you a question, I'm working on my chart, and Saturn's got eight moons and no rings, I think I mucked up my maths, help!"

Sinistra sighed and gently slid her fingers around Hooch's wrists, tugging her hands down and straightening up. "Work, work, work." Patting her hair back into place, she arched a brow and rolled her eyes to the door. "Sorry."

"No, that's all right." It took Hooch a few seconds to gather herself and stand, her knees unaccountably quaky despite the long rest from climbing the stairs. "I'll just take myself off, then. But I think that maybe, possibly soon, we should talk about this a little more?"

"There's no 'possibly' about it." Sinistra led her to the door and paused with one hand on the handle, then leaned in, her lips just under Hooch's ear. "And I hope you weren't planning on stopping at just a talk."

Hooch laughed, then cleared her throat and left, sweeping past the student who carried an armful of charts. Her breath came faster, her heart pounded, and it had nothing to do with the stairs. She didn't even notice the long trek back down, the way her knees popped on every landing. Nothing touched her senses except the tingle in her lips. She'd practically been caught making out in the astronomy tower. That would make anyone feel young.

* * *

She'd planned to drop by Sinistra's on the weekend, possibly invite herself in for a little 'talk', but Thursday evening, after she'd spent three hours teaching Ravenclaw's newest Chaser how to do a barrel roll without falling off the broom, she stepped out of her bathroom, mother-naked and still toweling off her hair, and found an astronomy professor sprawled out across her bed, one long and narrow foot resting on the opposite, dimpled knee.

"I got bored with waiting," Sinistra announced, and sat up, unfastening her robes and pushing them off her shoulders to pool around her waist. She pointed at Hooch, then pointed at herself, then crooked her finger with a smile.

Hooch, clutching the towel to her stomach and breasts, stared with her jaw gaping at the mostly naked woman in her bed. Stared at the rounded breasts and dark aureoles, stared at the pointed nipples and olive-toned skin. Sinistra hadn't been wearing anything _but_ that robe, those breasts were aimed right at her, the invitation was terribly clear, and Hooch knew she needed to say something. Something that made the long silence and the slowly vanishing smile on Sinistra's face less uncomfortable. "Um. Could have sworn I locked my door."

Sinistra brightened and rose up on her knees, laughing, with both hands extended towards Hooch. "You did. But you'd be amazed the sort of key copies you can get if you tell Filch when Pince is alone in the staff bathroom." She laughed again at Hooch's expression and wriggled her hips to make her robes fall from around her waist to her knees. "Come on, come on, Xiomara. Time for that 'talk', I think?"

Hooch stepped closer to the bed, the towel still clutched to her chest. She couldn't take her eyes off Sinistra, off the curve of breasts and dark aureoles that bounced just a touch as Sinistra reached for her. Reached for her towel, actually, and yanked it out of her hands, tossing it over the far side of the bed. Hooch felt her cheeks heat up as Sinistra leaned back and looked her over, one eyebrow raised. She knew what the other woman was seeing, and she desperately wanted her towel back. Breasts that had lost the firmness of youth decades before, stomach that was more rounded than she cared to admit to, hips that had spread and widened - she didn't think she compared to the attractive witch in front of her, didn't think she was worth the slow, determined slide of Sinistra's hands up her sides and around her ribs.

When Sinistra leaned forward and kissed her, though, she lost track of her nervousness, lost her worries and anxiety. Sinistra was kissing her, licking and nipping at her lips, tongues sliding across each other. Eyes closed, Hooch brought one knee up and onto the bed, then the other as Sinistra moved with her, both women shifting to the center of the mattress. Sinistra's hands pushed through her damp hair, roamed over her shoulders and fluttered down her breasts, then locked on her hips and tugged, making Hooch lose her balance and collapse. Breasts squished against breasts, a nipple poking into her sternum, and Sinistra's soft laugh in her ear with a wet and pointed tongue tracing the curve of her lobe.

There _wasn't_ a great deal of talking involved, as it turned out. Mostly a moan here and there, a whispered please or yes or more, a guttural ache of a name. Hands and lips moved over skin, sucked and plucked at nipples both pink and dark, spread across thighs and spread open cunts. Then Hooch hesitated and Sinistra paused, her eyes wide and dark as she hovered over the older witch, knees between thighs and hand resting against a heated but dry mound.

"It.... Sorry. Nothing personal, I promise. It just takes me a while," Hooch admitted, her hips shifting and breasts swaying when Sinistra fluttered her fingers with a questioning expression. "Time of life, all that rubbish."

"Thought it might, actually." Sinistra stretched up and kissed her again, slowly, drawing the point of her tongue across Hooch's bottom lip. She moved, leaning over the edge of the bed for her discarded robes, and dug into a pocket deep in the inner lining. She rose up again with a smile, flourishing a small vial of a clear liquid, and making a triumphant, fanfare-like sound. "I came prepared to come. And in a coincidence that amuses the hell out of me, I got this on my holidays in Greece. Two guesses which island, Xiomara."

Hooch snorted with a repressed laugh that eased into a moan when Sinistra coated her fingers and stretched out beside her, when those slickened fingers parted her labia and brushed across her clit. She turned her head and found Sinistra's mouth, kissed her as slow and deep as Sinistra's fingers pressed into her, reached into her cunt and coaxed her own slickness from her. Another moan shifted into a groan shifted into a gasp and a shriek. Her thighs tensed and tightened, her back arched, and she felt her fingers cramping as she gripped the sheets and tried not to scream. Sinistra reached deeper, rubbed the tips of her fingers over a spot Hooch had forgotten she even had, and that restrained scream broke free.

Sinistra made that triumphant sound of fanfare again and raised both hands over her head. "Score! Ten points to Astronomy!" Cackling at Hooch's attempts to get enough breath to laugh, she flopped down on the bed, licking her fingers and humming merrily. "My turn, Xiomara," she said, taking Hooch's hand and placing it quite firmly between her thighs. Hooch grinned, rolled over, and fastened her mouth on Sinistra's breast, fingers and tongue moving in concert.

* * *

In the morning, she woke with Sinistra's hands trailing over her back. Her hips _hurt_, her thighs burned, with the muscles strained and stretched from activity she hadn't done in ages. That ache was minor, though, minimized by Sinistra leaning down and tracing a line across the small of her back. "You've got freckles in the shape of Cassiopeia, did you know?"

Hooch smiled and rolled to one side, blinking through bleary vision of insufficient sleep and grinning like a Slytherin with fresh blackmail material. "Didn't know that, actually," she said, fingers tracing over Sinistra's stomach and up to a series of rose-tinted marks on her throat and shoulders. "Do I have any other constellations I should know about?"

"Mmmmm, I'm not sure. You'll have to come up and let me do a chart for you." Sinistra waggled her eyebrows and grinned broadly. "A very detailed and intricate chart. Could take _hours_."

"I'm up for that, I think," Hooch said, sitting up and leaning against the headboard with the sheet in her lap. Sinistra had paid enough attention and adulation to her breasts over the course of their entertainment that she wasn't the tiniest bit embarrassed now about their slight sag. "Aurora. I ... thanks." Her hands fluttered at the insufficiency of that word and she sputtered for more. "I mean, it's been a long while since I've done that. Thought I might have forgotten how."

Sinistra propped her head up on one hand and smiled. "Could have fooled me. Seemed like you knew what you were doing rather well. You're surprisingly flexible, by the way. I most definitely didn't expect that one move."

Hooch laughed, playing with Sinistra's hair. "Modified starfish without stick. Usually have to be in the air to pull that one off, though."

"Whatever. It was impressive. I insist on seeing it again." She sat up and kissed Hooch slowly, her lips moving along the curve of Hooch's jaw and up to her ear. "And on seeing you again, Xiomara. And again."

Hooch laughed again, drawing Sinistra down with her. "Now that's a broom I'm more than willing to fly with you."


End file.
